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A nationwide social experiment launched by a wave of marijuana legalizations is finally bearing results in the form of higher depression rates and addiction. It started in 2012 in Colorado and Washington, setting off a domino effect that has seen restrictions lifted across nearly 40 states, including 23 where it's legal to use marijuana recreationally. The Biden administration now aims to demote the drug from its schedule I status, which lumped it in with heroin and LSD, to schedule III, the first step toward total decriminalization at a federal level. Marijuana has been lauded for its purported benefits for pain...

The White House is promoting President Joe Biden’s mass marijuana pardon and scheduling review directive as part of a “Fight for Our Freedom” campaign meant to “mobilize young people” as next year’s election approaches. A factsheet about the campaign that the administration published on Thursday contains a section dedicated to the president’s cannabis reform actions from late last year titled, “Addressing a Failed Approach to Marijuana.” “The criminalization of marijuana possession has upended too many lives—for conduct that is now legal in many states,” it says. “While white, Black and brown people use marijuana at similar rates, Black and brown...

An infectious pathogen inside California’s pot farms is attacking cannabis plants and growing invisibly for months only to spoil a crop just as a farmer is ready to harvest. Scientists believe that it’s in nearly every pot farm in the state and could be causing billions of dollars in damages to the national weed economy. Hop-latent viroid, or HLVd, shrivels pot plants and reduce how much weight they produce by as much as 30%. It also destroys the amount of THC, pot’s most common active compound, that a plant produces, greatly reducing the value of affected plants. HLVd was first...

A doctor said kids think they are just smoking marijuana, but tests show fentanyl Marijuana laced with fentanyl is rising across the US, a Washington doctor has warned, after cases of the drug cocktail were found in New York, Alabama, Illinois and Louisiana. Fentanyl, a highly potent synthetic opioid that's 100 times stronger than morphine and 50 times stronger than heroin, is increasingly being mixed with other substances to make them more potent at a cheap price. Just two milligrams of fentanyl – imagine 10 to 15 grains of table salt – can prove fatal, and staggering figures showed it...

The French psychiatrist Jacques-Joseph Moreau published a book called Hashish and Mental Illness in 1845, the same year that Scientific American brought out its first issue. In it, he explored his own experiences with the drug cannabis at the Paris-based Club des Hachichins—some of which took place alongside the likes of Victor Hugo, Honoré de Balzac and Charles Baudelaire. Two years earlier Moreau described the “undescribable delights” of a “marvelous substance.” But in his 1845 book, he noted in great clinical detail the similarities to psychosis when ingesting high doses. Nearly two centuries later the possible link between cannabis use...

Hollywood legend Woody Harrelson said that fellow actor Matthew McConaughey is his biological half-brother. Harrelson made the claim during an interview with Esquire to promote his new HBO show, “White House Plumbers.” The statement is a follow-up to comments previously made by McConaughey last month. In a new interview with Esquire, Harrelson claims that when McConaughey was born in 1969, McConaughey’s dad told his mom, “That ain’t my son” and refused to go to the hospital with her. Harrelson said that he “knew that detail” years before Mary Kathleen McCabe insinuated she may have had an intimate relationship with Harrelson’s...

Republicans, in their unending quest to quash the tide of marijuana legalization, have latched onto the peculiar notion of canine unemployment as a rallying cry. The stage for this bizarre spectacle was Minnesota's House of Representatives, where a bill legalizing non-medical cannabis for those 21 and older recently passed by a vote of 71-59. During the pre-vote debate, Republican state Rep. Brian Johnson, who stood firmly against the bill, raised the alarm over the cost of retiring K-9s. "I did not see anything reading through the bill dealing with our K-9 units," Johnson declared. "Can you tell me how much...

MAKHACHKALA, Russia (AP) -- The father of the suspects in the Boston Marathon bombing claims that his son who is still on the loose is a smart and accomplished young man. Anzor Tsarnaev spoke with The Associated Press by telephone from the Russian city of Makhachkala on Friday after police said one of his sons, 26-year-old Tamerlan, had been killed in a shootout and the other, Dzhokhar, was being intensely pursued. "My son is a true angel," the elder Tsarnaev said. "Dzhokhar is a second-year medical student in the U.S. He is such an intelligent boy. We expected him to...

The Big Apple is now the Big Blunt. Not just because decriminalized marijuana led to proliferating mayhem in the five boroughs. Not just because stinky smoke hangs everywhere, seeping into subway cars and even Broadway theaters — the acrid odor I detected in the crowded men’s room of the Majestic Theatre a few weeks ago was not from “The Phantom of the Opera” smoke machine. It’s also because of a forbidden-to-utter truth, in an age where raising the minimum wage ever higher has become mantra — namely, a license to get high has turned service employees into zombies.

Figures from the National Poison Data System (NPDS) show adolescent cannabis use spiked by 245 percent between 2000 and 2020. Research findings were published on Monday in the journal Clinical Toxicology, and detail a decline in the rate of alcohol abuse over the same period. “Ethanol abuse cases exceeded the number of marijuana cases every year from 2000 until 2013,” explained study author Adrienne Hughes, an assistant professor of emergency medicine at Oregon Health & Science University, in a release. However, “since 2014, marijuana exposure cases have exceeded ethanol cases every year, and by a greater amount each year than...

At a Nov. 15 hearing on cannabis reform at the federal level, House Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-Md.) said President Joe Biden’s pardon of people convicted of “simple possession” of marijuana under federal law was “a good first step,” and added that the next step is that “cannabis must be decriminalized at the federal level as a matter of basic justice in the country.” Under current federal law, marijuana is classified as a Schedule 1 illegal drug, which means it has a “high potential for abuse” and is not a “currently accepted medical treatment in the U.S.,” according to Drugs.com. Other...

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Waste fibers from hemp crops out-perform graphene for a thousandth of the cost, according to new researchIs there anything hemp can’t do? A year after hemp became legal to grow in the United States, we’ve seen its power to make better clothing, better buildings and better medicine. Now, there’s something else hemp appears to be better at – making batteries. Most auto batteries today are made from lithium-ion, an expensive, quickly disappearing material. A team of American and Canadian researchers have developed a battery that could be used in cars and power tools using hemp bast fiber – the inner...

Cannabis users soon may be a majority among young adults in the District of Columbia and several pot-friendly states, a trend that points to a potential future of destigmatized marijuana across much of the nation. More than two-fifths of young men and women nationwide now use cannabis at least on occasion, according to federal data, a quotient that has risen steadily in a decade of relentless legalization. Much of the trend is driven by young women, who have all but closed a decades-long gender gap in marijuana use.

Detectives said doctors told them there was a high level of THC (tetrahydrocannabinol) in his system. They believe the 4-year-old boy ate a large number of THC gummies. The attending doctor at the hospital said if someone intervened shortly after the boy ate them, his death could have been prevented. The Sheriff’s Office said statements Clements made to detectives didn’t match evidence they found in the home.

Next year, Circle K gas stations will give new meaning to the term “highway.” Circle K has partnered with multi-state cannabis operator Green Thumb Industries to sell legal cannabis at Circle K gas stations in the state of Florida. The collaboration marks the first time cannabis will be sold at a gas station. It also comes after President Joe Biden said he is starting action to decriminalize the drug. Marijuana had previously only been sold legally in dispensaries in the United States. Marijuana has also been sold at pharmacies in other countries with legal cannabis programs. Marijuana sales are expected...

‘By extending a pardon to these individuals, you would enable them an opportunity to begin a new chapter of their lives.’ Less than a day after President Joe Biden announced his administration was pardoning all Americans convicted of “simple possession” of marijuana, Democratic Miami Gardens Sen. Shervin Jones is asking Florida’s chief executive to do the same. On Friday, Jones called on Gov. Ron DeSantis to extend “a similar policy” for all Florida citizens with prior convictions of simple possession of marijuana — having a small quantity of the drug for personal consumption. “As you may know, the majority of...

As drug legalization groups and the cannabis industry lobby to legalize cannabis across the United States, with initiatives to legalize marijuana on the November ballot in five more states, many experts warn this will only increase the physical and mental harm from the unregulated, high-potency cannabis. President of the American Board of Pain Medicine and a vice president of the International Academy on the Science and Impacts of Cannabis, Dr. Ken Finn, said high potency cannabis use is being linked to poisonings in young children, as well as psychosis and schizophrenia in an increasing number of regular users. “A lot...

At sunset from atop Haystack Butte, the desert floor below shimmers with a thousand lights Illegal cannabis farms. At this hour and distance, serene hues cloak the rugged enclave of Mount Shasta Vista, a tense collective of seasonal camps guarded by guns and dogs where the daily runs of water trucks are interrupted by police raids, armed robberies and, sometimes, death. So many hoop houses pack this valley near the Oregon border that last year it had the capacity to supply half of California’s entire legal cannabis market

Liz Truss has been made Prime Minister of Britain. This was expected, but also the darkest day possible for Britain. Previously, UK Defence Secretary Ben Wallace had backed Liz Truss’ view that Russian forces must be pushed out of “the whole of Ukraine” – and suggested this should include Crimea. Even the Guardian at the time had accused Liz Truss’ position was “recklessly inflaming Ukraine’s war to serve her own ambition.” Meanwhile, in Russia, this was playing out on TV endorsing World War III. Everything that can possibly point to war is unfolding before our eyes. There are no peacemakers...